Free Her Leading Man by Alice Duncan Page B

bucket on her shoulder across the set to
the well. She
hooked the bucket onto the chain and lowered it into the well. A crew member
hiding inside the well unhooked the empty bucket and replaced it with the one full of
water. What amazed Christina was that anyone watching the picture after it was
all put
together would never even guess that the entire scene was faked.
    She was making a pretty good show of carrying the bucket, if she
did say so herself. Didn’t spill a drop more than was necessary to convey to
the world that there was actual water involved. This was,
Christina thought, a most Egyptian-looking scene , even though she and Orozco looked about as much like Egyptians as they
did Swedes. But that was all right. The pictures were supposed to create
fantasies, and this was a good one.
    “ Come to me, my pet ,”
Orozco, who was supposed to be her dedicated lover, purred.
    “ Not on your life, buddy,” Christina replied
while, at the same time, looking shyly at the ground before her. Her character,
a slave girl, always comported herself with the utmost modesty. Christina knew it
wasn’t worth asking why, if she was so darned prudish, she was one day
soon going to
bathe naked in front of a man to whom she wasn’t married. The
pictures were just like that, and there was no getting around it.
    “ Ah, but
you will. And soon.”
    The blasted man was so arrogant and sure of his sexual prowess that
Christina wished she could slosh the water from her bucket all over him.
That, however, would not go over well with Martin, who was standing on the
sidelines scowling hideously as the cameras cranked away. Sprockets clunked
out onto the
dirt, sending up little spurts of dust every time they hit.
    Because she was a consummate professional, Christina didn’t
react by so much as a flutter of her eyelashes to Orozco’s cheap
statement . Instead, she walked demurely past him, at the same time
making sure
that her hips swayed in the most provocative manner she could summon. She thought
rather cynically that for a Biblical epic, this picture sure had a whole lot of sexual
teasing in it.
    Another actor, Paul Gabriel, who was as fey as a fairy and was only
attracted to men, had been hired for the role of Pharaoh’s brother. His
character was supposed to lust after Christina’s character, and
they were
scheduled to encounter one another for the first time in this
water-from-the-well scene.
    Christina much preferred acting opposite men like Paul, because they
never made lewd comments or tried to get her into bed. Naturally, all the
studios did
their best to hide the fact that some of their most beloved stars
preferred partners of their own sex. If that word got out, the Daughters of
the American Revolution and the Purity League would have a fit as epic as this
picture was meant to be.
    Paul strode onto the set now, looking every inch the lustful male
animal. And he probably was relatively lustful, Christina mused; only he
didn’t lust for women. “Aha, there you are, my pretty!”
    He had kind of a squeaky voice, which didn’t fit his astoundingly
masculine body, but Christina had long since quit finding such discrepancies
amusing. They
were now merely part of her job.
    “ You sound like one of Robin Hood’s merry
men,” she said with a smile in her voice. She didn’t have a smile on her face.
Rather, she shrank back as if from an evil presence. Which was patently
ridiculous, especially when one considered that Pablo Orozco was supposed to save
her from the clutches of Paul Gabriel. If justice had prevailed, it should have
been the
other way around.
    “ I know it, darling, but I don’t know how
Egyptian ravishers sounded three thousand years
ago .”
    “ I suppose not. Just don’t twirl your mustache
or anything, or you’ll make me laugh.”
    “ Wouldn’t dream of it.” Paul grabbed her arm
and hauled her to his chest, a maneuver which was
supposed to
surprise her into dropping her bucket . She
did drop the bucket, and